The China Archetype



Posted: Saturday, January 22, 2011

by Walter Rhett
Charleston Perlo

China is the archetype of America's hopes and fears, displaced from its shores. Few know its history, the character of its dynasties, its struggles with imperialism, or even the incredible story of how an unwieldy feudal society was transformed into a fast growing, capitalist mega-colossus, devouring natural resources, stretching its hand from Africa to South America developing technical projects in mining and energy, exporting guest workers; building a dam that effects the rotation of the earth, adding more new energy capacity last year than the entire country of France consumed.

China is green: several of its major cities have bike sharing. Hangzhou now has 10,000 bikes available in stations only 200 meters apart. The city had 2.1 million rentals in 2008. It is an exporter of solar panels to villages without electricity in Africa and Asia. China has drama, last year (2010), a waitress stabbed China officials who made inappropriate offers; she killed one and wounded two. Chinese medical care, especially in hospitals, is a mess. If you read comments on its largest Egnlish language website, you'll see a lot of its people describe the US in 1930s imperialism terms and are fearful of a US invasion. Its foreign ministry website is a well organized lists of contacts and meetings, high and low level, by its officials across the world.

Mostly China is epic. It is the country where an Emperor discovered tea when leaves blew into his boiling water, the country of the insights into humanity's trails and trials provided by the masterwork of wisdom, the I Ching, but mostly the country of the Long March. That military retreat in the winter of 1934 provided a witness of the Chinese people's faith and sacrifice. Traveling over 6,000 miles in the dead of winter over some of the world's roughest terrain in Western China, only 7,000 were together at the end, of the 100,000 who started out. With all the wrong elements from the American view, the wrong political system, the wrong leaders, the wrong emphasis on liberty and human rights, China has emerged as a country in which its past—or its present—doesn't block its progress.

Its socialist world view was described by Mao Zedong in 1963: “Where do correct ideas come from? Do they drop from the skies? No. Are they innate in the mind? No. They come from social practice, and from it alone; they come from three kinds of social practice, the struggle for production, the class struggle and scientific experiment. It is man’s social being that determines his thinking.”
 

Walter Rhett Walter Rhett attended Ohio State and writes from Charleston, SC. He writes about national and global affairs with an eye on Southern history and culture and enjoys listening to his readers.

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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)
» left by Jennifer Stewart
 1 year 105 days ago.
152 fans.
The Chinese culture has always seemed so alien and impenetrable to me, almost as if it belonged in an era in the past I couldn't access. Not any more. Epic is the word. What is the dam you mentioned?
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